Mhairi’s ryanair air flight was an hour delayed, but sure that’s ok. Picked her up at the airport and we drove North (thanks Matt for the loan of the car) to newgrange which is in the county of Meath. It’s an old (5000 years in fact) passage grave.

If you look closely at the entrance picture you will see that there are two entrances – one for people to go through and the other (called the roof box) allows the sun to shine into the central chamber on the winter solstice. It is one of the two UNESCO sites in the Republic of Ireland (the giants causeway is one too).

There also used to be a stone henge (enclosure) around newgrange too, and some of the large stones you see around the edge (especially at the entrance) are highly decorated. It’s a great place and I really recommend getting there if you are touring around Ireland.

After Newgrange it was off to see Melifont Abbey – a cistercian abbey close by. It was one of the first (if not the first) abbey founded in Ireland. It was attacked countless times, and even used by the English forces in the battle of the Boyne. It has since fallen into disrepair and even used for housing pigs!

Then it was onto Monasterboice – again an ancient monastic site, and home to some very ancient (10th Century) High Crosses – pictured below.

Then back to town, out to dinner with the family – and after Mhairi and I went on to have a pint at The Cobblestone pub. More excellent trad music (played every day in the pub). Just wish I’d known about the place earlier!

Lazy start to the year.. but I promise I don’t intend that to be my new years resolution.. No, I have plans to actually be lots more productive this year!

Anyway, Geocaching was the order of the day. Basically you go to a website and get the GPS co-ordinates of a site. Buried at the site is a box with trinkets in it (and a log book) and you take something out, and put something in.. sort of an international treasure hunt. Some of the sites are just interesting – and this one – the Drombeg Stone Circle was one of them. Not sure how old it is, but a good bit BC anyway that’s for sure.

The watery pit picture is of a Fulacht Fiadh – which is the Irish word for a cooking site. 318L of water can be boiled in 18 mins by chucking hot stones into the water.

At one of the other sites is a tribute to Henry Ford – as this is where he came from. I also put a pic of an incredibly noisey donkey up – not that you can see how noisey he is.

So great to catch up with these great people! Lorna and Mark now living in a house with a turret in Dundee.. so maybe see them over there – thanks to Morgan for organising everything, and looking forward to picking Graham and Myra up from ChCh airport in July!

Mum and Dad were recently on Morning Ireland (National radio program) talking about Uganda. The section on Dublin couple set-up university in Uganda half way down the page at http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0110/morningireland.html is the link. It plays with Real Player which you may need to download.

Also…

1)Andrew Quin’s weblog a friend from college – writes really well (I need lessons!) click on the little UK flag on top right – unless you can read Swedish.

2)My friend Eliza is Ms. August in a climbing calendar!

3)There’s a scarily cool website called www.archive.org which keeps a record at regular intervals of the whole WWW. So you can see the BBC website from aaages ago. I’ve put up a link to my own website from when I first put it up.. the DHTML only works with Internet Explorer I’m afraid.

So on the 31st it was back to the airport again after 6 hours sleep or so.. and flew down to Co. Cork. 23 euro for the flight on the way down – 53 euro for the train… hmmmmmm.

My friend Mairead kindly collected me from the airport and drove me to Clonakilty. Really fun times catching up with friends from college I’ve not seen in years. Ben I’d not seen since he headed off to the Antarctic to do research for two and a half years

There were many games played – quite enjoyed cranium, articulate and upwords. Mairead had procured some deadly fireworks from the North, and we set them off on a beach at midnight. Good times!

Headed into Edinburgh early the next day. Well, ish, it was nice to have a bit of a lie in.

First impressions of Edinburgh were really positive. It has lots of windy streets, cobblestones and green spaces and generally just looks old and well kept. Course I could be wrong, but that’s how it seemed to me.

We headed up to the castle, and then walked the royal mile to the queens residence at the far end – and finished up with an open top bus tour.

The door is where Robert Louis Stevenson (treasure Island author) grew up. There was a nice quote along the lines where his mother came down one evening to see him looking out the window watching the lamp lighter at work. She asked him what he was doing – and he replied ‘watching the man make holes in the dark’.

Had a couple of pints in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde themed pub (the man it was based on was from Edinburgh)

Far too soon time to head back to Dublin (though Ryanair did their best to keep me in Scotland by delaying the flight until 00:15 – which was really thoughtful of them). So thanks to Mhairi and her family for giving me a brilliant introduction to Scotland. The weather was kind – beautiful skies every day ;)